Which got me thinking -- what, exactly, is “branding” as opposed to marketing? And does it also have tried-and-true rules, like marketing does? I think Neil Patel summed it up best in one of his Kissmetrics blog posts: “Where Marketing Ends, Branding Begins.” Marketing is the technique you use to acquire customers, Patel wrote, but branding is what draws them to you in the first place and keeps them coming back for more.

With that in mind, here are five rules of branding that have held true for nearly 100 years:

1. Don’t have a generic name.

You probably remember most of the big technology companies that sprang up before the dot-com bubble burst in 2001: names like Yahoo!, AOL and eBay were easy to remember because they were quirky proper nouns. Today, the biggest tech companies have similarly memorable names (e.g., Amazon, Facebook, Google).

2. The less you offer, the more you’re remembered.

Offering too many products or services weakens your brand name, which customers will always associate with the product or service that first put you on their radar.

A great example of a company that avoided this trap for decades but then fell into it is McDonald’s. When the fast food upstart first became popular, there were diners everywhere. And what do diners offer their customers? Everything. But when McDonald's first became popular, it had only nine items on its menu.

Today, McDonald’s offers everything. It's become the fast food equivalent of the diners it beat out over 50 years ago. As a result, it's had to reinvent itself multiple times to compete with new burger competitors like Five Guys and Shake Shack.

3. If you want to expand, launch a separate brand.

Granted, offering too much isn’t necessarily a problem if you can keep up with the demand. That’s why McDonald’s is still making billions every year. But offering too much under the same brand name is a mistake every single time.

One of the biggest cases of brand-extension failure is Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft is still an industry leader in some key markets -- but at one point the company completely dominated the tech market. Then it decided to release tons of new products and services under the Microsoft name.

Fortunately, if you’re thinking of starting a new brand, being a person is a lot better than being a faceless corporation. You can just piggyback off your good reputation on your new brand’s website (e.g., “Hey, remember how much you love me? I started this brand, too.”).

4. Promote what you do, not what you’re selling.

I see so many companies saying things like, “At our company, we offer unique offerings.”

People don’t think in terms of products and services -- they think in terms of jobs they need to get done. Or, as Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

So, instead of promoting what you sell, you should focus instead on what you help people accomplish. Specifically, that means the job that you help them do -- one they wouldn’t be able to do by themselves.

5. Ratings and reviews are your salespeople.

Most people believe that they cannot close a sale without a set of interpersonal communication skills. Ultimately, they end up internalizing the belief that they (or a sales team they train) are the most qualified people to sell their own services. But this is only partially true -- after all, their customers are much better equipped to do the selling.

So start telling your leads that you grade yourself based on how willing they are to refer you once you’re done. That way, you prepare them to leave you a glowing recommendation on LinkedIn and refer a friend or business acquaintance.

You can still be successful if you don’t have a strong brand. Plenty of generic companies are really good at marketing and know how to set up the perfect marketing funnel for each of their lead sources so they can scale to their hearts' content.

But if your brand doesn’t represent anything, customers won’t keep coming back. They might try you out once or twice, but that’s it. Customers stick with companies they like and remember for the long haul, not just the most affordable product or service they can find.